Egypt

2011

When Egyptian security forces stormed
the Cairo offices of U.S. government-funded Al-Hurra television station
Sunday night, the studio was live on the air, covering clashes just outside its
building between the military and civilians that left dozens dead (including Al-Tareeq
cameraman Wael
Mikhael). During the raid, Al-Hurra anchor Amr Khalil continued to
broadcast as he tried to calm the soldiers who stormed the office brandishing
automatic weapons. Al-Hurra has provided English subtitles of his broadcast.

October 14, 2011 1:32 PM ET

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I have been blogging in various platforms since 2006,
focusing on human rights conditions and police abuses in Egypt. During this
time, the Egyptian regime was widely described as one of the most
"liberal-moderate" and sometimes "semi-democratic" regimes in the region, but
meanwhile, hundreds of young people were hijacked, jailed, fined, and
intimidated. Egypt has been named by CPJ as one of the
worst countries to be a blogger, and now resides on its list out today of "10
Tools of Online Oppressors."

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For the millions of non-Arabic
speakers around the world who followed Egypt's revolution live one journalist
stood out--Ayman Mohyeldin of Al-Jazeera English. Mohyeldin, 32, used his
knowledge of the region and of the West to make sense of the events unfolding
in Cairo's Tahrir Square for an international audience. He also witnessed the
unprecedented wave of assaults on journalists by supporters and hired thugs of
the crumbling Mubarak regime. Mohyeldin
was himself detained while reporting.

Mohyeldin visited CPJ's office in
New York March 23 to speak with supporters, friends and staff about the role of
the pan-Arab satellite channel since a Tunisian fruit-seller in the town of
Sidi Bouzid set himself on fire in December in frustration at the dead hand of
political repression.

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I've just returned from a hectic week at SXSW Interactive,
the annual gathering of digital technologists and creators in Austin, Texas.
Conferences like this are often moments of isolation from the rest of the
world, where attendees become consumed with the trivia of the event itself. But
because many of those attending SXSWi are prolific online journalists, bloggers,
and social media users, the conference's self-obsession doesn't stay confined
to Austin. One tech startup even offered a
browser plugin that would hide any Twitter with the
"#SXSW" tags to hide the constant chatter from the rest of the world.

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The right to receive and impart information is a fundamental
human right enshrined in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, but in Zimbabwe,
watching news of North African and Middle East
protests apparently amounts to treason.

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Craig Labowitz at Arbor has been sifting through the evidence of how countries in the Middle East have been blocking and throttling the
Internet in the last week. His
analysis indicates that while both Bahrain and Yemen had
periods of slowed or impaired access, only Libya seems to have
taken the drastic step of shutting off the Net entirely.

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The
news of the sexual assault against CPJ board member and CBS correspondent Lara
Logan hit us hard on Tuesday. At CPJ, we work daily to advocate on behalf of
journalists under attack in all kinds of horrific situations around the world. Because
of Lara's untiring work with our Journalist Assistance program, she's well
known to everyone on our staff.

Today, on its 18th day, the Egyptian revolution
has finally achieved its goal, deposing Hosni Mubarak and his regime. Egyptian journalists
who have courageously found ways to work under the yoke of Mubarak's censorship
and repression are releasing a sigh of relief that they've held in for three
long decades.

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When Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reporter Robert Tait
was taken
into custody by Egyptian authorities at a police checkpoint near central
Cairo on February 4, he didn't know he'd become witness to torture. But, cuffed
and blindfolded for 28 hours, Tait heard and saw beatings and electrocutions. "My
experience, while highly personal, wasn't really about me or the foreign media,"
Tait
writes in the U.K. Guardian. " It
was about gaining an insight--if that is possible behind a blindfold--into the
inner workings of the Mubarak regime." It is exactly that kind of insight that
can be gained when reporters are allowed to do their jobs, and it is why CPJ
exists--to fiercely defend the rights of journalists to do their work. Take a
read of our recent Egypt coverage here
to get a sense of the massive scale in which journalists have been attacked and
detained, and see Tait's whole piece in the Guardian here.

February 10, 2011 10:37 AM ET

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CPJ's executive director lays out "What Is at Stake With Egypt's Media Crackdown" in a February 3 piece on the Huffington Post. Joel Simon writes: "With
no witnesses, those undertaking the violence in Egypt will have a free hand to
carry out their brutal campaign without restraint. Standing up for the rights
of journalists at this crucial moment may be our last, best hope of stemming an
impending bloodbath that could go down in history as the gravest example of
political repression." Read the rest of his article here.